Conjoined (eBook)

2

A New Place
{Allyson}

Allyson was overjoyed with her little one-bedroom unit in a building filled with people at different re-entry phases in their lives. Each floor had an average of three apartments. On her floor, the neighbor across the hall was a recovering addict, and at the end lived a woman who suffered a mental breakdown during menopause, leaving her divorced and penniless. The other floors were comprised of assorted mental and emotional illness subcategories.

Moving here was the next step in their collective journey to healing. Being relegated to the dilapidated section of town was either a punishment or a reward for graduating from the program. The perspective varied based on how much Kool-Aid one drank while in treatment.

“The area has an authenticity lacking in the more gentrified neighborhoods,” Allyson’s transition coach commented when he showed her the space. She struggled to check an eyeroll. In his world, placing the mentally ill in the same community as criminals and others operating on society’s fringe was reasonable.

Later, she wandered a few blocks and witnessed a beatdown, a few drug deals, and sex workers busy making a living in a nearby park. The remainder of the neighborhood included low-income families trying their best to make ends meet. No home remodeling shows would be coming this way to help refurbish the place any time soon. People didn’t want “disturbed individuals” hovering around their innocent children or walking by their BMWs.

Allyson didn’t care about those people. Her family were those people. Look where it got her. She would play the rehabilitation game and ignore the judgmental sneers. She was excited to live on her own again, where she could decorate her place as she wished. Make it feel inviting. Safe. No more concrete walls. No more soft edges or plastic. The rules were strict at the psych hospital where she’d spent the last six months. Here, she had control.

Allyson filled her kitchen with real silverware, ceramic plates, and sharp knives. She couldn’t wait to have a steak. Six months was too long to live on mushy foods and pre-cut bite-sized nuggets. In the bathroom, she was giddy over a genuine glass mirror hung over the porcelain pedestal sink. And metal fixtures to hold her towels and toiletries. She longed for a glass shower door, yet a shower curtain in the pattern and color she chose made it feel less institutional. The best thing about having her own space again, though, was the privacy. Gone were the days of nurses and orderlies indiscriminately entering her room, dispensing pills without consent, and enforcing a routine based on someone else’s schedule.

Allyson jumped at Jon Bon Jovi’s voice, crooning about “Bad Medicine.” It was her alarm—time for her meds.

“Are they really what I need?” she questioned the words to the song and tapped snooze. She needed a minute to decide which liquid was best to help choke down her concoction of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, neuroleptics, and antipsychotics—another freedom she needed to relearn.

Walking to the fridge, she asked her voice-controlled smart speaker to update her on the latest news. She needed a distraction from the task at hand, and hearing how people had it worse usually did the trick.

Popping open a can of mango-flavored sparkling water, she half-listened to the female computerized voice run through the news highlights. As she took a deep gulp, an unexpected mood swing took hold, not from the sad stories and disturbing trends the news pedaled, but from memories triggered by the pshh sound the can made upon opening.

“Please don’t make me do this, Ma! Pa! Pleeaassee. I’ll be good. I promise I won’t hurt myself anymore,” she appealed, sobbing to her parents. She was twelve years old.

Anselmo and Patricia Marta stood there as the zombies Allyson would eventually become under the influence of her first medicinal cocktail. They nodded, emotionless, as the administrator spoke in a hushed yet authoritative voice. Andrea hung back to the side with a slight, satisfied smirk and a soda can in her hand. Anyone else would think it was passivity or even shock, but being her twin, Allyson knew how Andrea felt. Smug. Andrea was pleased another scheme had worked in her favor and thrilled Allyson would be out of the picture, even if it were only temporary.

Allyson was disgusted with Andrea as she popped open her drink. The pshh sound as air escaped the can and her sister’s loud, accompanying slurp had Allyson balling her fists tight while her arms hung by her side. What she wouldn’t give to punch her twin in her conceited little mouth. It was Andrea who had driven Allyson to self-harm. And it was Andrea who went to their mother with false concern over the cut marks on Allyson’s abdomen. Naturally, she left out the part where she was the one who made the first mark . . . the one who gave Allyson the idea self-harm equaled self-regulation, a way to even out her anxiety and fear. Once their mother surveyed the damage, no explanation or defense would satisfy her. No promise or begging stopped Patricia Marta from employing the best physicians and psychiatrists money could buy to fix her daughter. The ones who could work the fastest and keep it secret won her business because the only thing worse than having an unwell child was everyone in their social circle finding out about it. They’d become pariahs. And Patricia hadn’t made herself into something from nothing to lose it all over mental illness.

Allyson tried to be the model patient and played the game, hoping it would get her dismissed early on good behavior like a goddamn felon. The medical staff all saw through her efforts, though, and punished her. For six months, she was allowed no visitors and no contact with anyone from her old life. Those were the people who got her into trouble, in theory. They weren’t wrong—the powers that be making those decisions—but hell, if she wasn’t lonely. At twelve years old, lacking contact with anyone other than medical professionals and other mentally unstable patients made it easy to slide down the rabbit hole into insanity. Thank God for art therapy.

An instructor came twice a week and taught Allyson how to relinquish her rigidity and get her hands dirty. Before, bright colors hurt her eyes, and she had an aversion to things overlapping or touching when they shouldn’t. Making anything other than food with your hands was an aberration. Even Ma disapproved.

“Only poor people work with their hands and get grease under their fingernails, dirt in their cuticles,” she’d said.

Ma wasn’t around to encourage her to keep things clean and simple, though, which freed Allyson to let go and explore. Connecting with different textures of raw materials and feeling the density or even aliveness of an object evoked an unexpected passion in her. Despite having to experience all the horrible events before this discovery, it birthed her talent as a mixed-media artist—a gift all her own.

The voice crooned from her phone again. With her eight minutes of reverie over, she lined up her pills and swallowed them one by one, catching herself from wanting to lift her tongue and open wide for inspection. While she performed this new ritual, the smart speaker rambled on:

“In entertainment news, streaming service giant H0RR Studios has announced a billion-dollar deal with Iceland to move its operations to the island nation by year’s end. Iceland has been an increasingly popular location for big and small-budget films, with its diverse landscape and open access to all the country offers. A 25% return on investment doesn’t hurt either, thanks to the country’s job creation stimulus. This announcement follows on the heels of H0rr Studios’ wildly successful video game launched this past Christmas, based on its franchise hit The Caretaker. What will the streaming giant think of next? Try a theme park based on cult classics, popular horror shows, and movies.”

Allyson swallowed hard. The Caretaker series was Andrea’s project. Andrea hadn’t mentioned a move to Iceland the last time they spoke. What did that mean for its employees? Were they expected to move with the company? She grabbed her phone, tempted to call her sister and find out the details. However, Andrea wouldn’t answer, and even if she did, she’d lie and say she had no idea what Allyson was talking about; ask her if she’d taken her meds today. Andrea would brag about some famous person she partied with, then pretend to be interested in what Allyson was doing while simultaneously demeaning it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on an art installation, Lyssy?” Andrea would quip with condescension.

“Fuck!” Allyson shouted, startling herself. “My project! And now I’m talking to myself in Andrea’s voice. Just fantastic. Add that to my growing list of symptoms! Maybe it will buy me six months more in treatment. Or another pill! Christ, I’m a mess.”

“Only a work in progress, Dawling,” Grace drawled as they walked through the door and plopped on the couch.

“Ha! Come on in! Can I get you something, Your Highness?” Allyson laughed when greeting...